


Reminisce

by dridri93



Category: Stoneheart Trilogy - Charlie Fletcher
Genre: Coda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4143021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dridri93/pseuds/dridri93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their world goes back to normal, after George levels his debt with the Stone, George and Edie can't seem to forget how their paradigm shifted for those three (or so) days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminisce

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished this trilogy (again) and I finally found the inspiration within me to capture these characters and answer the only question that matters once you end a book: what next?
> 
> This is my response.

When George repaired the carving, everything went back to normal.

For given values of normal, anyway.

His mum took to Edie like houseplants took to sunlight, and it was almost as if having two children to care for settled her down just a bit. She kept her trips short, made it home sooner. George and Edie rarely were left to Aunt Kay’s care.

When she’d first seen the girl at his side, his mum had just gasped a little and stared a little. George had known what she’d seen; now that he knew the connection, he could see it too: the curl of his dad’s mouth, the twinkle of his eye, all buried in the face of a girl who’d seen so much of the world and come out swinging.

But now everything had leveled out. Edie was back at school, and George had had to face detention with Killingbeck for his stunt at the museum, the stunt that had caused everything. (He still couldn’t believe that it had only been three or so days.)

Even as his life went back to normal, and Edie’s became something more normal than it used to be, certain aspects had changed.

George took up art. Well, sculpting, but he didn’t tell the teacher why he refused to work with paint. (Actually, when the teacher saw the monstrosity that came from his paintbrush, she handed him a hunk of clay herself.) Edie came with him, but she avoided the stone they were sometimes allowed to work. She didn’t need her glinting to follow her here, into this sphere of normalcy. She worked with clay and wood.  
George shaped little planes, mostly, although when his mind wandered he found himself molding a man, a cape of tarp wrapped around his shoulders and bridle chains hanging from his belt, cocky smirk crossing his lips, and pistol tucked into a holster. He tried to ignore it, tried to forget what the unfinished work brought back: cocksure smiles and a voice so steady it may as well have been made of the bronze from whence it issued, bullets always hitting their mark.

Edie, though, Edie didn’t fight the maker’s compulsion to create life in the inanimate. She shaped women, faces hard but a smile in their eyes, hair blown behind them as they flew through the air. Sometimes her sculptures had a familiar feel, and the look of an raged lioness defending her cubs, and George never asked why she smushed those sculptures back into clay blobs without ever firing them.

Every so often they’d walk together to the Royal Artillery Memorial, and stand and stare at the statues there. The Officer, greatcoat held in his hands, eyes watching the people below. The Shell-Carrier, heavy shells hanging from his coat and another held, ready to load and fire. The Unknown Soldier, limp on his stretcher, face covered by his greatcoat. (George could almost see his father’s face, and Edie let him dwell there for a few seconds every time.) Finally, the Gunner, shoulders thrown back, staring out at the world as if something would come bearing down on him at any second, with stubbornness and stalwart duty hardening his mouth. They’d both stand there and watch them, hoping for movement – any movement.

Only the pigeons obliged them.

“D’you reckon they can see us?” George would ask.

“I’d think so,” Edie would reply, eyes still fixed on the Gunner’s face.

“Well, then, d’you reckon they’re trying to tell us something?”

“I dunno,” she’d answer. “Maybe to move on and not lollygag about, reminiscing.”

“Yeah,” he mutter, “That’d be about right.”

Then they’d turn and walk away, heading back to the apartment they both called home, and neither of them would notice the Gunner when he turned to look after them, or the Officer as he smiled.

“Y’know, Gunner,” the Officer would joke, “I think they have the right of you.”

“You know what, Officer,” the Gunner would reply, staring after the kids he’d almost seen as his own, in a way, until they disappeared into the crowds, “I think they just might.” He’d settle back, face pensive, head tilted toward the sky (though none of the passers-by could tell).

Silence would fall for a little while.

“Except I wouldn’t say ‘reminiscing’ dammit. That’s Dictionary’s lot, them big words.”

The Officer would swallow a snort as something not befitting his station. (Who was he kidding, he just didn’t want the Gunner to think he thought it was funny. Had to keep the man off-kilter somehow.) “That it is, my good man. That it is.”


End file.
